In some applications, storage devices receive and store multi-channel data streams that include sequentially intermixed packets of data of different data channels. For example, a digital video recorder (DVR) may be programmed to receive a data stream that includes packets of data for multiple different channels (e.g., TV channels). In hard drive devices with moving parts, performance may be negatively impacted when host data is written according to a strict sequential order of receipt, as this may entail excessive seeks of an actuator arm to disparate storage media locations. For this reason, some storage devices implement caching policies that cause the storage device to coalesce together data of different write commands within a cache before moving the data to permanent storage locations. These caching policies may increase the number of forward-sequential writes and decrease the total time that the storage device spends writing data.
Despite the above-mentioned benefits of efficient cache utilization, caching large amounts of data increases the risk of crucial metadata loss in the event of unexpected power failure. In some systems, the host uses metadata to determine where to write new data. For example, the host may rely on metadata to identify storage locations of previously-written data when recording segments of a data stream, such as a video or audio channel stream. When recently-updated metadata is wiped from volatile memory before being copied to a non-volatile storage location, the host may—upon reboot—be unable to reconstruct recent storage locations and “hang” as a result of its inability to select a storage location for newly-received segments of the data stream.